Political Quotes

Edmund Burke: To admit it for a moment were to erect this power, usurped at home, into a legislature to govern mankind.

On the record
To admit it for a moment were to erect this power, usurped at home, into a legislature to govern mankind.
Said by
Edmund Burke

Editor's note · Context

Burke warns against legitimizing usurped power as a governing authority over mankind.

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Jan 1, 1790

Always acting as if in the presence of canonized forefathers, the spirit of freedom, leading in itself to misrule and excess, is tempered with an awful gravity.

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Governments must be abused and deranged indeed, before it can be thought of; and the prospect of the future must be as bad as the experience of the past.

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Who could doubt but that, at any expense to the state, of which they understood nothing, they must pursue their private interests, which they understood but too well?

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Do they mean to attaint and disable backwards all the kings that have reigned before the Revolution, and consequently to stain the throne of England with the blot of a continual usurpation?

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